Has Anyone Here Done any Gold Prospecting?

[quintessentone]

Gold prospecting is certainly a worthy endeavour if you like gold. I like gold.

Here's an interesting video as to where gold may have come from...I am going with a merger with a neutron star collision and a supernova explosion, but maybe it's a combination of several cosmological and chemical interactions. Nobody knows.

Is gold really just created from magic?

[MichSwampbuck]

I've had a head cold for a couple weeks and I didn't even get a 1/4 of a five gal bucket of river sand through the sluice when I stopped. Then the creek was getting low so I adjusted the sluice and waited for the next rain. I finished that bucket and did another half bucket while the flow was going so nicely though the sluice. At the end of that, I removed the field stones from the sluice and let it run straight though for a few hours. Yesterday, I took the sluice out and cleaned at the house and panned the sluice material.

Now, I had done a pan here and there before cleaning the sluice and didn't see any color. I kept thinking is that gold? No. Is that gold? No. I was thinking I got skunked and began to wonder why, until I got into the last bit of material from the sluice. The last few pans had produce five nice sized flakes. There is no doubt when you see that color in the pan, it screams GOLD!

I cleaned up the vial and recollected the flakes then added the new ones and now have 16 gold flakes in the vial, six more then before. Two are the biggest flakes yet, compared to the others that are more like flecks of gold. Not much, but it proves its there and I'm getting better at bringing it up out of the creek sand.

The flour gold is all through the black sand and I have never been able to recover that, so I'm saving the black sand for future experiments. I want to get a spiral gold wheel to extract that fine dust that teases me when I see it.

[Inspector44]

Has anyone here panned for gold? If so, could you describe how you went about choosing where to pan and if you found any gold, be it fine dust, flakes or nuggets? Also, what techniques did you use, like a sluice or rocker, or how did you use the pan to concentrate the heavy material?

There is physical labor involved, but for me, it is a recreational activity and on my bucket list. I find it pleasant to sit there and pan away while I listen to the gurgling stream and other sounds of nature. There is the occasional wildlife encounter as I'm not making much noise or moving around. Right now, the ticks and mosquitos are emerging, so it won't be so pleasant for very long.

My interest and subsequent disinterest came about on the same day. When I was younger I found a big ol chunk of pyrite in a river and ran to my grandpa thinking i was going to be the hero of the family, him telling me it was just fools gold and throwing it back killed it for me.

[MichSwampbuck]

My interest and subsequent disinterest came about on the same day. When I was younger I found a big ol chunk of pyrite in a river and ran to my grandpa thinking i was going to be the hero of the family, him telling me it was just fools gold and throwing it back killed it for me.

Sorry for that, it could have inspired you. When I first started on my creek, just for practice, I found a few chunks of quartz with what is probably veins of pyrite. Very pretty, and it inspired me to try harder and do more research, that soon produced results for me. Plus, where there is pyrite, there is also GOLD! That's something most don't realize, it may be "fool's gold" but it means the real thing is close by.

[Wild Bill]

I tried gold panning about 30 years or so ago for a day and that was enough for me ,5 or 6 hours of freezing cold water and a sore back for two tiny flakes of gold if memory serves me and it was on my door step at the time http://www.helmsdale.org/gold-panning.html  and was only a few bucks for the hire of the equipment. 

There was a gold rush in 1867 when shepherds noticed that the sheep that were crossing the river and burns had gold flakes in  their wool and with the amount of black volcanic sand in the area there is /was gold in them hills , but not for me

[quintessentone]

Yes, gold prospecting and/or metal detecting, at my age, would be too demanding.

After coming to that conclusion, I then started researching how to find semi-precious stones, for craft purposes, and that would be more suitable for me to do.

We all know the stones fast food places put around in and around their property, believe it or not, many nice stones can be found in there. But I have lots to keep me busy right now (like gardening, or as I nicknamed it "my pilates session"), so maybe when that particular craft bugaboo comes around again, then I'll start searching landscaping stones when I am out and about.

AI:

"Semi-precious stones, like quartz, agate, and tourmaline, can be found in landscaping stones and are often used for aesthetic purposes. These stones are not as rare or valuable as precious stones like diamonds, rubies, or emeralds."

[MichSwampbuck]

The creek is flowing from the recent rain, so I went out and did a half of a 5 gallon bucket of sand through the sluice. I panned the last scoop of sand when I got to the bottom of the bucket and found a nice sized flake. Plus I found a tiny lump I had forgot about in another vial stuffed down in my field pack. It might not be gold, but it looks like it is.

I'll clean up the sluice later and get a few more flakes. The creek is winding down already, so I'll bring up the sluice until a good rain comes through again.

[BeTheGoddess]

Lassters Reef needs YOU to find it.

Lasseter's Reef refers to the purported discovery, announced by Harold Bell Lasseter in 1929 and 1930, of a fabulously rich gold deposit in a remote and desolate corner of central Australia. Lasseter's accounts of the find are conflicting and its precise location remains a mystery—if it exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasseter%27s_Reef

[MichSwampbuck]

When I cleaned up the sluice, I used dish detergent and soaked the mat material in a bucket, like washing clothes. That was after spraying it off with the garden hose. That brought out some flecks and flakes along with a lot more black sand. I'm saving the black sand to try and extract the fine "flour" gold dust that is in there.

I added five more flakes to my vial, plus one from before I cleaned up the sluice. There are a few large flakes with the rest more like small flecks, so there are better than a dozen flakes in that vial. Plus some larger material like a small nugget, a couple of millimeters in diameter, and some inch-sized quartz pieces with what may be pyrite throughout. That is all I have for all the work since the end of last season, but the real rewards are being out there on the creek and having proof of concept by trying different things out.

I believe I can do better, it is time to make some alterations to the sluice. But I got 6 flakes out of half a bucket, and that meets my quota of at least 12 flakes per full 5-gallon bucket of sand, so I know that much is possible to do.

Now to work up a pack for next weekend and see how I can do with minimum equipment out in the field. I don't expect to do very well or even get one flake to be honest, but that stream is bigger, deeper, and runs year-round. My concern is that it is played out, however, they actually bring in sand with gold flakes from somewhere else. It is a campground where people spend the whole season panning that stream and using different equipment. Last year, I saw a couple scuba diving with a vacuum hose system that had a floating pump and sluice.

[MichSwampbuck]

Lassters Reef needs YOU to find it.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasseter%27s_Reef

We still have the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine out west here, Arizona I believe. There are also a few abandoned mines closer to me in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

Gold! I should have gotten more excited when I found the gold crown my stepfather saved after getting it replaced at the dentist. That would have been a nice nugget to find in my creek, enough to start a gold rush in the area, .